Blog post 2-23-19

This week in class was a slightly different week then most weeks in this class. On Tuesday we just talked about a paper we had to write. And Thursday’s class was canceled, and we had to do work online for it. This week was unusual. So, I am wondering what I’m going to write about since we didn’t do much in class this week. 

            Last weekend we read the text book chapter called “The Two Gulf Wars, 9/11/2001, and Afghanistan”. This chapter was about all those things and we really didn’t get to talk about it too much in class. So, I believe this is the time to talk about it. 

            The first second was about the gulf war of 1991. To be honest I didn’t know this war was a thing. I also enjoy how he breaks up the chapters, how he tells the history and then tell you about the protest songs of that era. The one song that stuck out to me in this section is the first song mentioned here by John Trudell called “Bombs over Baghdad”. This song came out in the early 90s so I feel like they could get away with a lot more stuff then song writers can today. He called the President at the time “Queen George” and the government “vampires”. This is bold.

            Then 9/11 happened and that lead us straight into the second gulf war. At this point in history we are much farther right now. This war started to find Osama bin Laden and he has been found at this point and has been put to death for what he did to this country. The songs from this part of part of history were more of the style of country. Artist like the Dixie chicks, Willie Nelson, and Toby Keith all did protest during this time. 

            One song that surprised me that it was a protest song was Green Days song American Idiot. I listen to that song as a child and knew every word of it minus the swears. But still now listening to this song now I can hear it how it would be a protest song. And it makes sense also that I heard a cover of it a few years back during more troubling times in American telling us not to be stupid and to sand up to stuff. And listening to the cover of the song, they bleeped out all the swears, the really afensive ones also.